Information technology and the computer industry are highly developed now. People rely heavily on computer systems. Therefore, computer servers with high calculation capacity and high stability are important for computer systems. Due to increasingly reduced office space, area occupied by computer servers must also be reduced. Traditional computer servers must maintain a high degree of stability to serve users, and the space occupied by one computer server is therefore greater than or equal to that of a desktop computer. The management of computer servers is difficult and the space utilization is tightened. Some normal companies have 2 or 3 computer servers, while others may have more than a thousand computer servers. Computer server management and space utilization become more critical in companies with more computer servers.
A blade server is a current trend in computer servers. The blade server combines the hardware of the computer server, such as a processor, a memory and a network connection, in one extension card, also known as one server blade. The blade server has a higher calculation capacity and higher stability, and occupies less space than a traditional computer server. Further, the blade server reduces the cost and the working temperature; moreover many functions and performance thereof are better than those of traditional computer servers. The blades of the blade server, called server blades, are inserted in a connecting base in a blade server system. Therefore, after the user buys the required server blades and inserts the server blades in the connecting base, the servers new inserted can work immediately. Each server blade works independently from other server blades. When the user needs more servers, the user needs only to insert additional server blades into the connecting base. Therefore, a plurality of blade servers may work in one casing which is similar in size to one conventional server.
The blade servers are high speed and stable computer server equipment for users having many servers such as a telecommunication company, Internet portal company, or internet services provider (ISP), and users needing great quantities of high speed calculations such as meteorological phenomena calculations, astronomical observations and calculations, deoxyribonucleic acid calculations in bioscience, and computer animation for the movie industry.
There are two types of blade server managements. One is an in-band management and one is an out-band management. For the in-band management, the management software is based on a basic input/output system (BIOS) or an operating system (OS). The in-band management utilizes software to control blade servers without any management board. Therefore, if any one blade server crashes, the server manager may lose the blade server. For the out-band management, there is a management board to control the blade servers. If any server blade is functioning in an unusual manner, the management board reports to the server manager and then the server manager immediately deals with the unusual phenomenon according to the report. But if the management board crashes, out-band management degenerates into in-band management. That is, if any blade server crashes in the meantime, the server manager still loses the blade server and fails to control and repair the blade server immediately.